So glad I spent the time to read the online reviews and comparisons, as the Fleck is the bomb! The 5600sxt replaced a 22 year old Culligan Mark 100 that served us well, but had reached the point that it wasn't worth fixing anymore. I had the Culligan Man replace the gaskets/seals a couple years ago, which cost a couple hundred bucks for a couple 25 cent gaskets! Lesson learned. Thought about another Culligan, but for $600 and a couple $18 Shark Bite 24" fittings from HD(1" over existing copper pipe-which I cut with an inexpensive pipe cutting tool-1" threaded-DON'T USE TEFLON TAPE), a $2 nylon 5/8" to 5/8" threaded (one end) fitting(to attach to the old drain hose-hoseclamped on) we saved thousands! Well worth the time spent researching. I did have to buy an 800# two wheel dolly to get the unit down the stairs into my basement, but it was needed to get the much smaller Culligan softener out. Installation took under an hour including programming, and we've had soft water for over a month, and have only added one extra bag of salt so far. At over 2500 gallons of conditioned water between regenerations, we've never used it up (and it went to default setting of 2 weeks-our area of MN has a hardness of 16-17), and we have a 17 year old daughter that sometimes takes two long showers, and two loads of clothes to be washed each day! Save your money, do it yourself, and install this top rated water softener. It is probably oversized for our family of four, but I would rather have (nearly) unlimited soft water with a unit that regenerates every two weeks than one that's old and noisy, and goes off every other night!

I am extremely happy with this purchase so far. Have had it installed for almost a week and the quality of water is great. I placed inline sediment filters before and after to help extend the life of the media and tanks. Only issue I had was there were no instructions included for the carbon upflow tank. It was pretty straightforward though and after a little research I found it was more beneficial to have it inline before the water softener to help the softener resin be more efficient. If you're looking to install a water softener, this system is what you want. For a few hundred dollars more, the carbon will remove impurities such as chlorine and pesticides. Totally worth it!!!!

System works supremely well, we def noticed a difference when the old system was switched out for the this new one. Oceanic was kind enough to send 3/4 valve adaptor at no cost, as it originally comes with 1".

I installed this myself, you do need two people to help insert the resin in the tank. Place a drop cloth for the resin that falls out when pouring it into the tank and be sure to clean up after, shop vac preferred. To make installation easy, get sharkbite connector and teflon tape. Wrap thin layer of teflon tape to valve threads. Clean copper, cut it, push in sharkbite connector and thread in the other end to the valve.

The discharge pipe should be connected to a drain with a proper air gap to meet code.